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2011/02/book-thief.html

Last night I came home from work as usual and as I walked down the driveway I noticed something wasn’t right. Something was missing. It took me a second to realise what it was but it was my bloody trailer! It had gone! Half inched! I didn’t even put a second more thought into it, as soon as I was in I called the police to report the theft. I used the new non-emergency line on “101”, since this wasn’t an emergency really. It’s only the 2nd time I’ve ever had to call the emergency services in any shape or form, and the last was 7 years ago when my friend Tom jumped off a short cliff edge (2 meters high) onto some rocks, landed badly and broke some bones.

I should probably mention at this point that the trailer wasn’t empty.

It contained the poles for a tent which are probably irreplaceable now due to the age of it, but it’s such a great tent it would be a shame to lose it. That’s what I was more concerned with, not the trailer. They’re easy enough to come by and for fairly cheap as well.

Anyway I called up the police station and was through to someone within 20 seconds. They took some details down and gave me a reference number. This took about 5 minutes and then it was done. I was told by the woman on the other end I’d receive a phone call in the next 24 hours for a proper statement. By this point I was happy it was getting looked into.

As a typical Facebook user I thought it might be a good idea to post there to my friends who live in the area, just asking for them to keep an eye out for it. I even posted a picture (which didn’t work for some reason, so I went back to text only). This sparked up suggestions to check eBay, gumtree and I thought of trying freecycle as well. Stolen items often seem to make their way onto those types of sites fairly quickly. I did some checking but it wasn’t there.

After a few hours my friend James suggested I contact the landlord in case it was them who had moved the trailer. I dismissed the idea as even plausible but instead thought of asking them about the recent contractors that had been renovating some of the building, just in case they had seen anything. I fired off a quick e-mail and that’s pretty much all I heard about it the rest of the night.

The next morning one of my workmates who carpools with me turned up. I told him the full story that I’m telling you now. We head to work and all sorts of scenarios are spoken about and before we know it we’re at work. As soon as I got in I told all the guys there – some knew already because of Facebook, others didn’t and were fairly shocked. “Who would want to steal a trailer?!”, I asked. “Someone who wanted to tow something I guess!”, was the response. We all laughed, it was a stupid question I suppose!

5 minutes after I sat down my e-mails came through and there was one from the landlord. It went to the tune of “We’ve received your e-mail and we’ll ask around the contractors”. Great, it’s a start at least. Nothing more was said.

About 10.30am comes around and I get another e-mail from the landlord.

“We moved your trailer”

What?! I kept reading. “We believed it belonged to a previous tenant who was evicted in the summer, so we removed it believing it to be abandoned.” OK, fair comment, but it has my number plate on it! It’s hard not to know it’s mine! Then it was pointed out that I was at work and they had nothing to compare it with. Doh!

Anyhow, the e-mail continued; “It’s still with our contractor so we will arrange to have it returned to you”. Great news! I was relieved so much. I e-mailed back saying thanks, and asking if the contents was still intact as well to which the reply was “yes”. That’s all that mattered. The poles are the bits that I want back the most otherwise our camping holiday would have been completely ruined in a sense. We rely on the large tent as our common tent for everyone to cook, eat and chat in. Without that we can’t all be in the same place socialising etc, outside gets too cold in the evenings.

Now that I know it’s safe it’s a big relief. It’s not been returned yet, they’re going to let me know when the contractor has time to return it. That way I can make sure it’s been secured and I can remove the contents. I’m not letting that happen again!

You might be asking why I’ve even bothered telling you all of this? It’s simple. Don’t take ANYTHING for granted. If a trailer is not secure, it WILL be stolen (or in my case, removed). And DON’T leave anything of value in it! That’s the mistake I made, and I almost paid for it. I’m just glad my luck was for the best here and it was someone I knew who removed it in the first place and would return it.

Now, all that said, keep safe everyone, and keep your belongings locked up.